Jim O’Neill, the celebrated economist who is set to retire from Goldman Sachs, has become one of the best known industry figures after coining the term Brics – an acronym for the fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

O’Neill, who has been chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management since September 2010 and is best known for his accurate predictions on the growth of emerging markets, will retire from the bank later this year, the firm announced in a statement on Tuesday. He has yet to communicate his next move.

O’Neill, who joined Goldman Sachs as a partner in 1995 as co-head of global economics research and chief currency economist after jobs at the Swiss Bank Corporation and Bank of America, first coined the term “Bric” in 2001 in a research note for the bank.

A decade later he spoke of the next group of emerging markets countries, called the “Next 11” in his 2011 book "The Growth Map". He said these ‘Next 11" group of fast-growing countries would be: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Turkey and Vietnam.

He praised a few of these countries in an interview with Financial News in 2009.
He said: “Iran is a highly technology-friendly society with a huge population. Nigeria is the largest country on the African continent in population terms and its leaders are keen to engage internationally. So those four – Nigeria, Iran, Turkey and Indonesia – are on our radar a lot. Vietnam and Mexico are also interesting.”

In the interview, he shared a tip on investing in emerging economies. “The size of emerging market countries is one of the most important factors to look at when selecting investments. If a country is able to create sustainable domestic demand then it has a better chance of being resilient.”

In The Growth Map, O’Neill also recalled his first years is finance, saying that until Goldman he had spent most of his time as a “’dirty economist’, someone who mixed classical economics with the rough and tumble of the trading floor”.

A northerner, he had grown up in Gatley, Manchester, and later studied geography and economics at Sheffield University. He earned a PhD in economics from the University of Surrey in 1982, researching oil prices. O’Neill later said he gravitated towards the City of London because he was in need of a well-paying job to repay his student debts.

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Describing his encounter with Babk of America he wrote in his book: “I confess I was naive: because the name was so similar to the Bank of England, I’d originally thought it was the London branch of the US Federal reserve rather than a multinational corporation.”

“But the bank gave me a chance and I was grateful for it,” he added.

He initially specialised on foreign exchange and was well recognised for his predictions on currencies before he was known as “Mr Bric”, after accurately forecasting moves in the yen in the 1990s and the euro in the 2000s.

Speaking about his favourite books with Business Insider in September, O’Neill revealed that his forex work was influenced by Rudi Dornbusch’s theories on exchange rates. He said: "My thinking about research on FX was greatly influenced by research by each of Dornbusch and his theories of exchange rate overshooting."

In one of his most recent weekly notes, which are called “Viewpoint”, he confessed his continuing love of forex.

He wrote: “I love the foreign exchange market despite the fact it has humbled me endless times during my 31-year professional trek. There is something about it that just kind of does it for me[...]”

Other than his being fond of forex, O’Neill is famously passionate about football, being a devoted Manchester United fan.

His passion even drove him to put together a group of fellow fans to take over the club from the Glazer family in 2010. What was known as the “Red Knights” consortium also included Paul Marshall, founder of London hedge fund Marshall Wace. The takeover attempt ultimately failed.

His notes are also dotted with humour and football forecasts. Last year, according to Business Insider, he predicted that a team from Manchester would win the Premier League but not the Champions League. He was spot-on, but probably not happy with the outcome, as Manchester City upset United to win the Premier League. Challenging the Mayan end of the world omen in December he titled part of one of his notes: “The World Can’t End. There is Man United versus Real to Look Forward to.”

O’Neill, who has been contributing to the London Evening Standard, wrote in one of his articles in 2011 that he believed the UK’s economic outlook was rosier than it seemed.

He wrote: “The view from the plane at 40,000 feet - which is where I spend a lot of my time - seems to me that gradually the UK is adjusting to a post-crisis world in which the consumer is going to take a lesser role, and manufacturing an increasingly important one.”

He recently shifted his focus on the UK’s involvement with the EU, saying in a article, published in November on the Evening Standard, that as the EU focuses on saving its common currency, the UK’s economic future may depend on trade elsewhere in the world.

In an article in January he called for policymakers to recognise that forcing the UK’s financial sector to “delever at the same time as the Government is persistently cutting back is not going to result in powerful economic growth.”

Although, his predictions about the global economic outlook have most recently lightened, his last Viewpoint published on Monday asked: “Are Things That Good?”
He wrote: “At some point, the question posed above is going to become very real, since I believe a) some equity valuations are starting to not seem overly cheap, b) there are challenges ahead (as discussed in my last Viewpoint) which now include currency issues and, c) of course, if things are that good, then major developed market bond yields, in particular the US, are on the way up which could create fresh issues.”